During our last check in, we had a look at northern Canada from the Arctic Circle to the North pole, and found we had quite a ways to go before we see an “ice free arctic” this year as some have speculated.

Today I did a check of the NASA rapidfire site for TERRA/MODIS satellite images and grabbed a view showing northern Greenland all the way to the North Pole.

There’s some bergy bits on the northeastern shore of Greenland, but in the cloud free area extending all the way to the pole, it appears to still be solid ice.

Click for a larger image - Note: image has been rotated 90° clockwise and sat view sector icon and time stamp added, along with “N” for north pole marker.

Link to original source image is here:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?T082121805

With more than half of the summer melt season gone, it looks like an uphill battle for an ice-free arctic this year.

Here is another view from today from the Aqua satellite:

Click for a larger image - Note: image has been rotated 90° counter- clockwise and sat view sector icon and time stamp added, along with “N” for north pole marker.

Source image is here:

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?A082121655

This dovetails with a press release and news story about more ice than normal in the Barents Sea

From the Barents Observer:
http://www.barentsobserver.com/?cat=16149&id=4498513
New data from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute shows that there is more ice than normal in the Arctic waters north of the Svalbard archipelago.

In most years, there are open waters in the area north of the archipelago in July month. Studies from this year however show that the area is covered by ice, the Meteorological Institute writes in a press release.

In mid-July, the research vessel Lance and the Swedish ship MV Stockholm got stuck in ice in the area and needed help from the Norwegian Coast Guard to get loose.

The ice findings from the area spurred surprise among the researchers, many of whom expect the very North Pole to be ice-free by September this year.  Source